Feature — 28 July 2014Inclusive Design: from the pixel to the city

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We’re excited to share with you our new animated short film about inclusive design. Inclusive Design: from the pixel to the city features conversations with leading designers creating the next generation of products, graphics and vehicles designed to work better for everyone.

Inclusive thinking needs to be built into the design process, whether you’re designing for the pixel or the city

Mat Hunter, Design Council Chief Design Officer

With this film we wanted to take a step back and explain what inclusive design means, and how it benefits the businesses that use it – creating great products from the iPad to the Ford Focus, and London’s new zero-emission black cab.

London Mayor Boris Johnson tries out the inclusive Tomorrow’s Taxi

Creating the film

The animation was produced by Design Council with creative production studio El Carousel who created the world of the film using a combination of 3D modelling and lighting effects, 2D animation & rotoscoping, live-action filming and traditional hand-drawn cel animation.

The experts

Anne Robertson-Ritchie

Anne Robertson-Ritchie is a retired academic – during her career in further, secondary and special needs education Anne has been involved in research on numeracy programmes and mathematics curriculum development. Having been a wheelchair user for the last eight years she has considerable first-hand experience of how both good and bad design affect everyday life for disabled people.

Mat Hunter

Mat Hunter is Chief Design Officer at the Design Council. He heads up our Design Challenges team running open innovation competitions that develop practical solutions to social problems. His recent projects include The Knee High Design Challenge, to improve the lives of children under five in South London, and Living Well with Dementia, which developed solutions for those affected by the condition.

Niels van Roij

Niels van Roij is an award-winning automotive designer, his studio works on a range of projects across vehicle design, product, film and research. Niels is a visiting tutor and lecturer, his work has been exhibited internationally including at the London Transport Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum. He currently is part of the team at the RCA working on the inclusively designed Tomorrow’s Taxi with car maker Karsan.

Rama Gheerawo

Rama Gheerawo is Deputy Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the RCA, where he holds the Readership in Inclusive Design. He leads the centre’s Age & Ability Research Lab, having personally supervised over 50 inclusive design projects with government, business and the public sector, working with organisations including GOV.UK, Samsung and Stannah. He co-leads the Tomorrow’s Taxi project with car maker Karsan.